After the mutant soldier from the future Cable traveled to the present to seek to change his apocalyptic time, he took the New Mutants under his wing and restructured them as X-Force, a mutant strike team that would take a more proactive stance against threats to mutantkind. Originally consisting of the rocket-propelled Cannonball, the plasma-generating Boom-Boom, the super-strong Warpath, the gladiator warrior Shatterstar, the cat-like Feral, and the mercenary Domino, X-Force initially fought the Mutant Liberation Front (M.L.F.) and their leader, the armored despot Stryfe, a clone of Cable. This brought them to the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. Commander G.W. Bridge, a former ally of Cable's who became determined to take X-Force down. To that end, the Canadian government's Department K put at Bridge's disposal the Weapon: P.R.I.M.E. super-team consisting of the cyborg Kane, the savage Yeti, the battle-suited Tigerstryke, the super-strong mercenary Grizzly, and the earthquake-generating former New Mutant Rictor.

X-Force next teamed up with Spider-Man and Siryn to prevent a terrorist bombing by Black Tom and the Juggernaut, after which Siryn joined the team. Subsequently they defeated a short-lived alliance between the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Masque's Morlocks which was followed by the revelation that Domino had been replaced by the shapeshifting mutant Copycat, that latter of whom had infiltrated the team at the behest of arms dealer Tolliver who was keeping the true Domino prisoner. After an attack by Weapon: P.R.I.M.E., Cable and X-Force were separated. With Cable out of the picture, Rictor rejoined his old friends who absconded in a captured S.H.I.E.L.D. vehicle. Meanwhile, Cable took the fight to Tolliver, defeating the mercenary Deadpool and rescuing Domino while X-Force rescued another former New Mutant teammate, Sunspot, from the External Gideon.

After a seeming an assassination attempt on Professor X by Cable, X-Force was targeted for capture by the combined forces of the X-Men and X-Factor. Ultimately it was revealed that Stryfe was responsible and X-Force were released. With Cable presumed dead, the team reclaimed his hardware from Graymalkin, Cable's orbital space station. This brought them into conflict with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the armored War Machine. Further clashes saw the team battling the immortal mutant Externals and the M.L.F. After Cable returned, the team rejected an offer by Magneto to join his cause and fought his Acolyte, Exodus. An encounter with the M.L.F.'s new leader Reignfire soon followed, during which Feral betrayed the team and Sunspot was lost after being teleported away by M.L.F. member Locus. X-Force then teamed up with the New Warriors to combat the Upstarts, followed by battles against the future-technology-powered Sentinel Nimrod and the techno-organic alien collective the Phalanx.

Soon after, Cable resumed the team's training and recruited the mutant-tracking Caliban into their ranks to replace Cannonball who had graduated to the X-Men. Ultimately, Cable attempted to force the team to go underground with new identities, but X-Force walked out on him. Shatterstar and Rictor journeyed to Mexico, while Siryn, Warpath, Sunspot, Meltdown and Domino remained together and were joined by another former New Mutant, Moonstar. The team roamed across the U.S., encountering Selene in Texas and a community of mutant children in New Mexico before being captured by Reignfire and Locus in Colorado. Taken to Las Vegas, X-Force learned the truth about the connection between Reignfire and Sunspot. A protoplasmic mutant life form, Reignfire had been injected with a sample of Sunspot's cell tissue by a scientist working for Gideon. This caused Reignfire to transform into a mirror image of Sunspot, complete with a telepathic bond that allowed Reignfire to possess Sunspot and control his actions. With his teammate's help, Sunspot was able to defeat Reignfire and the villain was taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

X-Force then moved into a new warehouse base in San Francisco before vacationing in Hawaii where they encountered the subterranean Lava Men and the fire goddess Pele. Returning to their new home, X-Force went to Domino's aid against the Gryphon and gained a new teammate in Bedlam, a former member of M.U.S.E. (Mutant Underground Support Engine), who sought X-Force's aid in locating his missing brother. Soon after, Cannonball rejoined X-Force in time for a clash with the Deviant strike team the Sword, a teamup with the reformed Champions of Los Angeles against the Underworld god Pluto, an alliance with sorceress Jennifer Kale against the mystic Pandemonia, and a battle against Bedlam's brother and his New Hellions team to prevent the revival of the destructive Armageddon Man.

The team was then summoned to Genosha by former British spy Pete Wisdom to help recover an experimental computer that held the consciousness of Wisdom's old friend, MI-6 scientist Archimedes Fogg. This brought the team into conflict with Magneto, Genosha's then-ruler and X-Force's former headmaster when they were still the New Mutants, whom they were able to defeat thanks to a quantum-powered Moonstar. The team soon became embroiled in the machinations of the Damocles Foundation, an alliance of Deviants, Eternals, and humans devoted to directing the world's fate by controlling the next dominant species -- which they believed to be mutantkind. The Damocles Foundation was revealed to have been behind the Sword and to have stolen the remains of Reignfire through a double agent within S.H.I.E.L.D. The Damocles Foundation attempted to use Reignfire's remains to revive a Gatherer, an artificial creature left by the Celestials, but X-Force helped Selene destroy it. Following this, Selene convinced Sunspot to assume his father's place in the Hellfire Club by resurrecting his deceased girlfriend Juliana Sandoval, causing Sunspot to leave the team.

X-Force came under Wisdom's leadership, introducing them to his clandestine world. Wisdom took the team underground and trained them as a covert operations strikeforce to battle threats such as Dr. Niles Roman and his mutagenic bio-engine that threatened to trigger an all-out gene war in San Francisco. Roman led the team to Wisdom's own sister Romany, who was creating spontaneous mutations in humans to harvest them for spare parts for an alien machine that would ultimately rewrite the human genome to eradicate disease, genetic disorders, even gender disorientation. X-Force refused to ally with Romany and destroyed the ship, seemingly perishing in the ensuing explosion. Soon after, a new team of media-savvy mutants usurped the name X-Force, bringing the original team out of hiding to reclaim their name. The new team prevailed and eventually changed their name to X-Statix, though by that time the original team had gone their separate ways. Sunspot and Warpath joined Rictor, Siryn, Domino and Feral as members of Xavier's X-Corporation mutant response group; Cannonball joined Storm's X.S.E. mutant police force; Moonstar was recruited to become a teacher at the Xavier Institute and mentor to a new incarnation of the New Mutants; and Cable became a messiah-like figure in his efforts to save the world's population from themselves.

Cable reassembled X-Force to help combat the threat of the Skornn, an ancient evil that preyed upon mutants. With the assistance of the Fantastic Four, Wolverine, Deadpool, John Spectre and the M.L.F., Cable seemingly destroyed the Skornn. Recently, Domino, Shatterstar and Caliban operated as X-Force when they organized an assault on the Xavier Institute to free the 198 from its grounds.